Tuesday, August 8, 2017

I am glad to see that these three characters are finally getting some time back in the spotlight. After being sidelined due to movie rights haggling and reduced to being a guest star in Guardians of the Galaxy, Ben Grimm will finally be starring in a title of his own, a revival of Marvel-Two-In-One (hopefully with a rotating roster of guest stars instead of just the announced Johnny Storm). Mr. Terrific will be heading up The Terrifics, which will also include Metamorpho, Plastic Man and Phantom Girl - which sounds like it will be very ccol and fun. Finally, Lando Calrissian will be blasting back to the silver screen alongside a young Han Solo. I look forward to seeing what Donald Glover does in the role.

17 comments:

I'm really surprised that Lando was NOT in The Force Awakens - what was up with that?

The Terrifics is definitely an homage to the Fantastic Four.

It is hard for me to believe anymore that Marvel is NOT trying to undermine Fox by not having a Fantastic Four comic book or doing anything with those characters. Fox seems to be countering by using Franklin and Dr. Doom...

To Anonymous: I remember that from my childhood. Ben Grimm says, "Thing ring, do your thing!"

Ross, this is yet another team up that I likely would never have come up with myself. Yet upon seeing it, I had the "aha" moment. This is a team up that I would love to see in reality. I really wish that the powers that be at all of these publications would think about making your plots into actual stories. Of course, I sense that there is a better chance that Slippery Rock University will have a football team join the FBS of the NCAA and win the national championship, defeating an SEC team in the process.

I've been wondering whether the success of superhero characters in other media might have reduced the need for anthology comics (including team-up series like Two-in-One). Part of the motivation as I understand it is to make sure your characters don't lay fallow for too long, to maintain trademark rights. Seems like that's a lot easier to do these days.

@TJS: Actually, it think its harder these days to have a underused character like Stingray or Halo pop in for an issue, when everything is part of a 6 part arc that wants to be a movie script. You either have to have 18 Avenger or X-Men teams to fit everybody in or come up with team-up-for-no-reason events like Convergence, Secret Wars or Contest of Champions.

I would not want to sit down to play at that table: Lando always knows exactly what everybody has, Mr. T knows the math stone cold and can probably count the cards while they are being shuffled, and when Ben yells "It's Clobbering Time" you never know whether its because he has a good hand or that somebody just scarfed the last slice of pepperoni.

Mt. Terrific is one my favorite characters. His part in the story in JSA where Nazis took over Earth was outstanding.

One of my favorite quotes from JSU:

"Justice League Unlimited: To Another Shore (#3.4)" (2005)Wonder Woman: Mr. Terrific can fill in. He's smart enough to do monitor duty and the Sunday Times crossword puzzle at the same time. Mr. Terrific: Go ahead, J'onn - I'm already finished with the crossword. Green Arrow: You did it in ink again, didn't you?

Sorry to say I find TV too hard to follow now and FIOS makes it too expensive to record and watch when I can watch at convenient time so I have not seen him on Arrow.

@Anonymous: they'd certainly only be half as bad as Hulu. As Optimum disables fast-forward only for the most recent on-demand reruns. Allowing one to zip through the boring commercials of the not-so-recent ones!